ABI Research: LoRa will lead non-cellular LPWA growth in the next five years

LoRa will lead the growth of non-cellular low-power wide-area (LPWA) network technologies over the next five years, according to a new report from ABI Research.

The study was commissioned by Semtech Corporation and is titled “LoRaWAN and Multi-RAN Architecture to Connect the Next Billion IoT Devices.”

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Marc Pegulu, Vice President of IoT Applications in Semtech’s Wireless and Sensing Products Group said:

ABI Research found that LoraWAN is the leading license-free technology for LPWA networks in IoT vertical markets including metering, cities, asset tracking and logistics, commercial building automation and home.

The white paper examines active LoRaWAN network implementations based on a multi-RAN architecture from five different companies:

• Orange enables device and data management for cellular and non-cellular LPWA network technologies through the Orange Live Objects platform.
• JRI-MySirius provides turnkey temperature monitoring for both fixed and mobile assets using sensors leveraging LoRaWAN and a cloud-based application platform.
• Ercogener has developed an end-to-end asset tracking solution supporting the LoRaWAN protocol, which is being utilized by the French state-owned railway company.
• MultiTech’s programmable gateways are the original gateways that integrate LoRa® for industrial IoT applications and support Ethernet, 2G, 3G, 4G-LTE, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth/BLE, and GNSS.
• Chevron implemented a LoRaWAN network infrastructure to digitize a range of oil and gas fields.

Pegulu continued: “The future of IoT connectivity requires flexible solutions that can address a wide variety of vertical IoT applications, use cases and device types.”

ABI Research believes that LoRa will not only continue to play a vital role in LPWA networks; it will lead growth over the next five years.

The report highlights four key points:

• 5G and non-cellular network technologies will coexist: In the future, LoRaWAN and 5G will coexist in the form of hybrid networks or multi-RAN architectures.
• Full 5G will take longer than expected: 5G cannot solve massive IoT anytime soon. 5G network and device hardware supporting Release 17 specifications will not be commercially available until early 2024.
• LoRa is leading the way in LPWA technology: By 2026, LoRa is expected to be the leading non-cellular LPWA network technology and will account for more than a quarter of all LPWA network connections and more than half of all non-cellular LPWA connections. The total number of non-cellular LPWA connections is expected to reach 1.3 billion by 2026.
• LoRa is moving beyond enterprise applications: Consumer applications leveraging LoRa are starting to take off. Traditional architectures are seeing competition from LPWA network technologies, which provide direct device-to-cloud connectivity for an increasing number of smart home devices.